1. A failure of the salt / water heat exchanger. All MSR designs seem to have 3 or 4 loops, so this particular heat exchanger can be isolated from the fuel salt. Nevertheless, developers will need to prove that any explosion is contained in the secondary or tertiary loop.

In truth, there should be no salt/water heat exchanger. Even in early steam turbine units, the steam generator should never have water at the same point as molten salt. It shoud be a recirculation boiler, steam superheater unit.

So would a more appropriate test to be have a high pressure steam pipe inside the low pressure salt container, and then rupture the pipe?

Via Kickstarter I donated funds to Gordon McDowell for the 2012 Remix. I donated at the level necessary to get my name in the credits because I wanted bragging rights. But Gordon never followed through on that promise. I've never complained to him though because the guy is too much of a legend. The fact that he makes all these videos is just fantastic.

I watched the 2016 remix and showed it to friends. It's too long. Too focused on space. Needs more editorial polish. If I was talking to Gordon I'd suggest he make lots of 3 minute videos that deal with a single specific issue about nuclear in a clear, concise and entertaining way. I'd love to see a video that explains quickly how using molten salt saves money by shrinking the containment building. Keep it funky like the guy with the exploding fish tank. People like watching things go bang.

I'm not sure if I've answered the question. If I'm off track let me know.

No, Terje. Right on track. Thank you. And feel free to start with my first name. I appreciate basic respect. Names matter.

I'm very happy you viewed "'NASA' - Thorium Remix 2016" and showed it to friends. Can you please re-post your brief review here at: "NASA" - Thorium Remix 2016 if it is not too much trouble? Thank you. That way others benefit from your experience. Which was one intention of my starting that topic.

Why I am getting the impression from your writing "tone" with me that you are a science authority here on this forum?

_________________"Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."

It's okay to ask more than one question in a single post here on this forum. I would appreciate it if you would not act like a forum moderator unless in fact you are one. Thank you.

I'm studying this video not for the science but for the motive, since you asked. Apparently, you know perhaps very little about human mass psychology and media propaganda or you are aware of subtleties but you don't care. Maybe you need to study up on Goebbels. Let's focus in on a couple lines from this jackass video, shall we?

1. The Opening Remark: "When you mix salt into water, you normally get a very safe product like . . . salt water. [Really?] But under special conditions, mixing the two together can result in a massive explosion."

So he made this video because he's is interested in safety? When he himself is still exposed to his "massive explosion"—really?

Kirk Sorensen, our kind host here, also showed sodium metal hitting water in one of Gord's "thorium remix" videos to highlight one danger of LMFBRs (that killed the Weinberg MSBR program at ORNL).

Hi, Kirk! Again, great kudos for bringing back MSRs from the dust bins at ORNL for the whole world to reconsider, yes? Thank you. On behalf of humanity. Oh, and by the way, good work on being the first nuclear reactor developer for a thorium MSR. And please, if my treatment of TerjeP's post on your forum is offensive and rude, I am ready for your review and possible censure. No worries, mate!

Anyone who loves "massive explosions" needs to volunteer for medical duty in Aleppo. Wow. Perhaps this kid who goes by "Eric" needs a lesson in humility. Explosions are NOT cool. Fans of explosions need to join the military or emergency medical services or other work in the consequences of hate, stupidity, neglect, "ex setra". What a wasted effort.

2.. The actual title of this film is not in the YouTube title "Pouring Molten salt into Water - Explosion!" rather briefly in smaller print font beneath the much larger:

TheBackyardScientist---------Molten Salt Explosions

So is he interesting in safety or making explosions fun? Nuclear reactor licensing authorities have a real legitimate interest in explosions. Especially like the explosion from the hijacked commercial aircraft full of innocent people that was deliberately and fatally crashed into the U.S. Pentagon on 9-11-2001!

"Trying to kill us? Morten salt clouds trying to kill us? Oh God! Let us NEVER build Morten salt reactors! All those Morten salt nuclear people are wrong! They will kill us! And shame on Morten company for leaving us vulnerable to terrorism! Someone call the U.S. NRC and IAEA!"—anonymous dumbass

Let's focus on the misinformation. It isn't a "cloud of molten salt" as in the horribly infamous mushroom "cloud" that accompanied the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the only "peaceful" use of nuclear weapons in human history and hopefully the last. No. Rather the young propagandist filmmaker FAILED to correctly state at the outset the truth that his "massive explosion" was a super-heated steam bubble from within a tank of water. Ah! But if his short-attention-span audience bothers still to get past his other salts and the pH test ["Oh God! What is pH? I can't watch this. Too much science!"], Eric finally shows the obvious: steam.

At 5:57/8:44: Eric says, "I think this is the stupidest thing I've ever done." So he admits to being a jackass.

6:14/8:44: "Sodium metal reacts pretty violently with water as expected." As "expected"? Who is the audience for this film?

Some scientist! He is anonymous. His facebook page has his first name: Eric. He's a punk egomaniac with money to spend on expensive high-speed camera equipment and sundries to get an internet following which he evidently has succeeded in doing. Great.

Notice how similar a visual effect this young idiot is going for compared to a famous CGI version of one of the most infamous H-bomb test "massive explosions" ever conducted:

I believe people who personally think molten salts "are the most promising pathway forward for advanced nuclear reactors" and who agree that MSR nuclear technology such as the FE LFTR is "cheap, plentiful, reliable, and clean energy [that] is exactly what the world needs" would be well advised to be wary of misinformation from the global perspective of nuclear proliferation.

Molten (NOT Morten) salt reactors AREsafer than water-cooled or liquid-metallic-sodium-cooled reactors that are not as safe. A Flibe Energy, Inc. (FE, Huntsville, AL) LFTR is deliberately designed to have U-232 in the fuel salt expressly for its ruinous gamma field that is highly dangerous i.e., NOT safe. FE has done this to "minimize the appeal of any fissile material for diversion away from power production." (Terje: Have you read the EPRI tech assessment?)

This topic is textbook certified troll dung.

_________________"Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."

If explosions are not cool could you explain the popularity of the TV show "Myth Busters". Do people watch it for the jokes or the science. Maybe a bit but what draws them in is the promise of explosions.

My Science teacher at high school made an art of captivating our imaginations with well planned explosions. It is marketing 101 that if you have a message to sell then you first need to grab peoples attention.

Agree or disagree with the motivation behind the molten salt explosion video. But you can't argue with the fact that it is effective at captivating an audience. Maybe you think our ideas don't need a mass audience. I disagree.

It might be possible to sell people on nuclear power and nuclear concepts by being boring. However I doubt such an approach will get far. We should not be scared of making content that is entertaining. And explosions can certainly be entertaining. It is why cracker night holds such appeal to the point where it is a cultural phenomena.

The following promotional video for Flibe Energy starts with an explosion. So somebody gets it. Are you going to call them a jackass?

This forum is dead. It doesn't matter. I recently asked KitemanSA what a "2.2+" reactor is afraid I had missed an important discussion. Our extremely tolerant and generous host deigned to reply:

Kirk Sorensen wrote:

Who knows. People on here yap and yap but no one wants to do any hard work. Just act like armchair engineers and demand entertainment.

You know what that says?

This forum had a lively period once when a lot of really great info was being posted. Kirk has threatened to shut it down a couple times. Here's a recent one during speculations with respect to the fissile start up for a Flibe Energy LFTR:

Kirk Sorensen wrote:

You really have no idea what we do or what we work on, and when we do make available large and well-reviewed documents like the EPRI report, they are summarily ignored by the visitors to this board, who prefer to argue about the angels dancing on the head of a pin rather than what the LFTR design really is.

Really, I don't even know why I keep this place up. I should just delete the whole thing. It accomplishes nothing and just wastes time.

Gentlemen, don't be a bit surprised one day when you come to this site and find it fully password protected and your accounts deleted.

Kurt and I begged Kirk to not do that. This forum contains valuable nuclear engineering information by experienced engineers. But if I get the lock-out, I've already expressed my gratitude to Kirk for all that I've learned from it up to this point. You are not a nuclear engineer, a physicist, a chemist, but an IT professional for coal companies.

This post of yours might just seal the deal. I see in reply to your other topic started on ocean floor disposition for nuclear wastes you used my name. Then you called me a jerk! Because you don't like to do any "hard work" on providing some preliminaries on such a hugely complex subject? I'll repeat what I said there: I know I'm a jerk. Always been that way. Sorry.

This video you posted: Energy from Thorium, LFTR Technology by Flibe Energy is the Flibe commercial that begins with a natural supernova explosion where elements heavier than iron through to element 92 were forged prior to the formation of our solar system. How can you compare that to "Molten Salt Explosion"? Why am I asking?

On this irrelevant "Salt versus Sodium explosion - in water" topic: How do you get the mass attention on the energy policy debates? Shut the grid down! Can't do that. I am well aware of peoples' love for explosions. I was a pyromaniac in my youth. I didn't have Eric's budget. But I made due. It was spectacular. I acknowledged your explosions point, didn't I?

You did not answer the propaganda point I made. Morten—oops—molten salt reactors are not an explosion hazard. Period. That was the whole point of the ORNL MSRE (1965–1969). You didn't acknowledge that. Did you read the EPRI report? I gave you the link.

Were you an educator? I taught chemistry labs at Arizona State University for three semesters (1985–1986). The students loved me! This is all rather silly. People just want the power to be on. They don't care about how or where. They know if they don't pay their power bill there will be trouble. Starting with their power getting shut off.

And they are really really frightened of the word nuclear anything. Get real. Another depressing point Kirk has made elsewhere.

Kirk Sorensen remarked upon leaving one of the Thorium Energy Alliance (TEA) Conferences (Washington D.C.?) on how only a few key people need to get with the program. That is what this forum is about. Have you found a science education forum for students? When you do, you can post there. This forum has a lot of technical information by reactor developers that presumes a strong science background. I noticed you chose to ignore the topic by Alec Herbert: Need Some Help Helping LFTR and Nuclear Energy Overall and instead you started this and another topic? I was disappointed.

_________________"Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."

If Kirk wants me to change tack I'll respect that. His house, his rules. But so far you're the only one that has objected to my contributions. And you get very rude, wordy and tangential in doing so. So I'll consider you to be an aberration and generally ignore you. It seems like the best way to keep the peace. The alternative would seem to be a lot of frivolousness debates about semantics and motives.

Tangential is okay as long as it illuminates in complex subjects. I want peace, Terje. I made specific points. Just pick one. I bet if we met in person, we'd like each other and laugh. You seem nice. Can we start again? I think this is a self-moderating forum. Can we just have a laugh? My father was a military officer. What effect do you suppose that had in my formation? Especially when coming home from kindergarten in the fall of 1962. I didn't understand why everyone was so worried. Can you appreciate that? I apologize for my "tone" here. I feel the stakes are very high on a global scale. I feel that very powerful people who are running the show are not aware of Dr. Weinberg's successes and goals. Kirk Sorensen is aware. He knows!

Regards,

Tim

_________________"Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."

Guys, having spent some more time in the public relations "trenches" in the last few weeks, let me relate to you that the size of uranium reserves has nothing to do with public acceptance of the technology. The public believes that reactors take something best left alone (uranium) and turn it into a horrible monster that will come and devour their children in their sleep. From that perspective, telling them that there is plenty of that somewhat horrible stuff (uranium) that can be turned into devouring monsters by a fleet of nuclear reactors offers them pretty much zero comfort.

On the other hand, a vision of benign solar panels and gently spinning wind turbines is offered to them as the alternative, and they imagine, oh yes, I could see a few of those on the outskirts of where I live and I can imagine one or two panels on the roof I don't care about, and if I have those two wonderful things then the horrible devouring monster can never eat my children.

It's a fantasy of course, but I would wager about 98% of people believe some minor variant of this.

_________________"Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."

1. A failure of the salt / water heat exchanger. All MSR designs seem to have 3 or 4 loops, so this particular heat exchanger can be isolated from the fuel salt. Nevertheless, developers will need to prove that any explosion is contained in the secondary or tertiary loop.

In truth, there should be no salt/water heat exchanger. Even in early steam turbine units, the steam generator should never have water at the same point as molten salt. It shoud be a recirculation boiler, steam superheater unit.

So would a more appropriate test to be have a high pressure steam pipe inside the low pressure salt container, and then rupture the pipe?

More appropriate test of WHAT? Since when will you have a high pressure steam pipe inside the salt container?

No, but I certainly share your surprise that more of the commenters on this site would rather talk about a thousand other things of far lesser significance than the first thought-out, carefully-described, credibly-backed design work on a thorium molten-salt breeder reactor since the 1970s. It just goes to show how poorly I guess at how people will respond to things.

[Folks, you] really have no idea what [Flibe Energy, Inc., Huntsville, AL, does] or what we work on, and when we do make available large and well-reviewed documents like the EPRI report, they are summarily ignored by the visitors to this board, who prefer to argue about the angels dancing on the head of a pin rather than what the LFTR design really is.

Really, I don't even know why I keep this place up. I should just delete the whole thing. It accomplishes nothing and just wastes time.

Gentlemen, don't be a bit surprised one day when you come to this site and find it fully password protected and your accounts deleted.

Tick tock, Terje.

_________________"Those who say it can’t be done are usually interrupted by others doing it."

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